5 Common Social Media Mistakes Made by Churches

Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for many church leaders have become a necessary evil, something they do because the latest church leadership conference or magazine tells them they should. Unfortunately this attitude is the beginning of a bad relationship between the social media tool and its user. The truth is, a Twitter account and a Facebook page aren’t going to do anything for you if you just “have” them. As with many things in life, it is how you use them that counts.

In this post, we have gone to the trouble of detailing several common mistakes churches and nonprofits make with their social media accounts. Hopefully you can learn from these, identify your own errors and correct them.

1. They Know Not What They Have

As stated in the opening paragraph of this post, often times a Twitter account or fan page is birthed from a knee-jerk reaction and then soon forgotten about. While the existence of social media profiles is good in terms of web presence, they can also hurt you if they are left dormant. The “no social media is better than bad social media” theorem sometimes applies here. When a visitor checks out your profile and sees that there hasn’t been a post in 3 months, it communicates that there is little going on worth talking about at your church.

The best way to avoid this mistake is to make sure a staff person or committed volunteer is in charge of managing the social media. It does not hurt to set guidelines and standards either, for example, require at least one posting a day or whatever works for your organization. Most of the time, an overall efficient communication strategy should fix this.

2. Doris Has a Nephew Who Knows How to Use Twitter

If you have worked in the local church for a while, you probably know that when there is a job that needs to get done but church leaders don’t want to do it, they delegate it to a teenager or kid in the youth group. This works great for babysitting, pulling weeds on the campus or stacking chairs, but not for social media. Doris’ nephew should never be given the keys to one of the biggest potential voices of your church. The person who is put in charge of the social media needs to be competent and someone who understands the vision and values of the church or organization. Ideally, this person would be on staff but that is not always possible, especially if you are overstaffed.

When thinking about the person or team who will own your organization’s social media, it should be a person who you would actually hire if a position existed. They should fit well with the leadership team, understand the values as stated before and show experience in using social media.

3. Money Can’t Buy Me Social Media Love

There are plenty of businesses out there selling Twitter followers and social standing. Just yesterday I was tempted to pay $19.99 for 2,000 followers (guaranteed) but then snapped out of it and splashed cold water on my face. This practice, while it does work in getting a bigger number next to your profile name, does not equal a better social media presence. As a matter of fact, it is everything that is wrong with America, it is a quick and cheap way to look cool. Often times these sorts of deals just mean more spam Tweets in your timeline and lots of annoying direct messages selling you stuff. This just confuses and dilutes your ability to communicate with your true followers.

Keep your social media goal in mind, is it about looking popular or is it about fostering relationships and communicating with people? If your goal is to look famous, than buy as many followers as you can afford. Oh and by the way, I didn’t vote for you for Homecoming royalty.

4. Integration of Information Indoctrination

If your are thinking about social media, I am going to assume you have a website already. One of the biggest mistakes businesses and churches make with social media is to never integrate it with their website. Integration of social media is more than just including a link with a Facebook icon. A website that is fully integrated with social media embeds Twitter feeds, allows users to comment with their Facebook profile and makes social media sharing of web content easy.

Take time to look at the Facebook API forum and see all the ways Facebook can be integrated with your site. Ask your web guy to offer some solutions to integrate social media in a prominent way on your site.

5. It’s All About Me

If you missed the introduction of Twitter 3 years ago, chances are you missed what it was all about too. Twitter was never designed to be a marketing tool, neither was Facebook. Lifecoaches, realtors and corporations have turned it into that. At its core, social media tools are meant for developing relationships and starting discussions. If all you do with your social media profiles is send out news updates, then you are ignoring your followers and missing the grassroots benefits that they have to offer you. It is good idea to directly respond to your followers and fans once in a while. As them question, retweet their answers, reward people for responding to you

There are several management tools that help you identify people talking to you and about you, for Twitter check out CoTweet and SocialOomph or Tweetdeck for cross-tool management. Like most of these mistakes, a sound strategy that values people and communication best practices will consider this mistake and have built in policies to avoid it. Think of social media like a digital small group: talk WITH your people, not AT them.

I know there are plenty more mistakes to be made, these are the most common. What social media mistakes have you made and how have you learned from them? We will take both personal and organizational feedback.